Category: Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

104. Beef Tenderloin with Cornichon Tarragon Sauce p.416


The recipe

Some good friends were coming to dinner, and I wanted to make something a bit special. When I’m looking for dishes suitable for an occasion, beef tenderloin is frequently at the top of that list. I had frozen part of the tenderloin I used for the Twenty-First-Century Beef Wellington so it was an easy choice to make. I decided to serve the roast tenderloin with three sauces, the cornichon tarragon sauce from this recipe, a Stilton sauce, and whipped horseradish cream. This sort of a menu seems much more appropriate to the fall weather I’m writing this in, than the summer weather I cooked it in. However, it was a pleasantly warm day, and I made one important change to the recipe. I grilled my tenderloin outside instead of sticking it in a 350 degree oven. The sauces were a bit rich for summer, but that just encouraged restraint.

The sauce is made by reducing white wine, shallots and tarragon, then adding cream, thinly sliced cornichons, and a mixture of mustard whipped with butter. This was a seriously powerful sauce. The mustard, tarragon, and shallot flavours were fairly strong on their own, but the cornichons were overpowering. I picked up good quality, imported sour gherkins from France. They were mouth puckeringly sour, without too much other flavour. They were nicely crunchy, but not really my favourite pickle style. The recipe calls for a lot of these little guys, and their concentrated vinegar permeated the whole sauce. My first impression of the sauce wasn’t great, just too sour, and overpowering the somewhat subtle flavours of the tenderloin. As I ate more it grew on me though. Once I stopped making a sourpuss face the underlying flavours came out, and they were good. The sauce also mellowed over the next day, and ended up being in a better balance.

I’m not sure if this is how the recipe was intended to turn out, or I just got a batch of very sour pickles. I think it’s possible I did everything right, because my dining companion preferred this sauce to the other two choices. She agreed that it was sour, but she enjoyed the interplay of the rich creaminess, with the clear vinegar cutting across it. I won’t rush to repeat this one, and if I did I’d try a different brand of pickle, or cut back on them. This sauce had to struggle to get over a bad first impression, but it did redeem itself after a few bites.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

103. Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Mojo Sauce p.476


The recipe

I chose this recipe because it was over 30 degrees, humid, and didn’t look like it was going to cool down overnight. We had dinner late because we couldn’t stand the thought of eating until the relative cool of the evening. This tenderloin fit the bill for a light dish that wouldn’t heat up the house. I was too hot to think, and this recipe is simple enough that I didn’t have to. I happened to have a tenderloin in the freezer, and an orange in the fruit basket, so I didn’t have risk sweating my way over the grocery store.

The recipe is simplicity itself. I just rubbed a tenderloin with salt, pepper, and a bit of oregano, then threw it on the grill. Meanwhile I whipped up the mojo sauce, which is nothing by orange juice, garlic, oil, and more oregano. Once the meat was cooked and rested, I sliced it and drizzled with the sauce.

For about five minutes work it was quite good. Oregano smells wonderful when it burns, and it left the crust of the meat with that great charred perfume. I’m a bit iffy on meats with sweet sauces, but the citrus was welcome on that stiflingly humid evening. The orange and garlic combination was new to me, and it probably wouldn’t occur to me to pair them, but it was quite delicious. The simply grilled tenderloin was nicely complimented by the straightforward flavours of the sauce. I wasn’t really in a mood for nuance, and this was certainly unfussy.

This isn’t a dish to try to impress the neighbours with, but it has its uses. It uses simple ingredients, doesn’t heat up the house, and it’s pretty much impossible to mess up. When you’re suffering from heat stroke these are all good qualities. Pork tenderloin is very lean and easy on the stomach, but it still feels substantial and like a real meal. When I’m looking forward to a night of uncomfortable twisting and turning in the sauna that is my bedroom, indigestion is not a risk I’m willing to take. This dish didn’t wow me, but I was very happy to find it on that particular night.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

99. Chinese-Hawaiian “Barbecued” Ribs p.491

The recipe

I wasn’t sure I was going to like these ribs, but I was pleasantly surprised. These are racks of ribs marinated in soy, sugar, ketchup, sherry, salt, garlic and ginger. They’re then baked at 325 for 1 3/4 hours, basting with the marinade every 20 minutes. Everything about the title is confusing, I get the Chinese part of the name, soy + ginger + garlic = Chinese, fine. But Hawaiian? Is it the ketchup that makes it Hawaiian? The blurb says the recipe came from a Hawaiian restaurant, but if they’d come from a Sweedish restaurant would they be Chinese-Sweedish ribs? Chinese-Hawaiian doesn’t really tell me a lot about what they’re going to taste like. “Barbecued” is another misnomer, quotation marks don’t turn barbecue into baking. Yes they’re low and slow, but where there’s no smoke there’s no barbecue.

I’m usually pretty relaxed about health and safety standards when I’m cooking. I’m happy to eat raw eggs, tartars and carpaccios, and if some leftovers have sat out longer than they should have I’m probably still going to eat them for lunch the next day. One aspect of this recipe gave me pause though. The ribs are marinated, then the marinade is used to baste the ribs while they’re in the oven. Using a marinade as a basting liquid or a glaze is often a delicious way of making the most of your marinade. Usually the marinade is brought to a boil before it does double duty as a glaze though. Not here, the only safety precaution the recipe mentions is to apply the last coating of glaze 10 minutes before you take it out of the oven. Maybe 10 minutes at 325 is enough to kill any nasties that have been growing in the raw meat juice marinade sitting out for nearly two hours… maybe. I followed the directions, and nothing bad happened. But it seems like bringing the marinade to a boil for a few minutes would make the whole operation a lot safer and not take a lot more effort.

The ribs themselves were surprisingly good. I was only able to marinade them for about 1 1/2 hours, instead of 3, but that didn’t seem to hurt anything. All the sugar in the marinade made for a thick caramelized coating, and the long cooking time almost gave them the falling off the bone tender texture of real barbecue. The glaze was thick enough to seal all the juices inside the ribs, so they stayed nice and moist. The glaze was a bit intense for my taste, it was really really salty and sweet. It could have used something to cut that. Normally some acid would be added to give the glaze some tang, or some chilies would spice things up. I find those flavours can balance the salty-sweet, whereas the ginger and garlic here weren’t really able to get the job done. I thought they were tasty, but too intense and unbalanced. My first few bites were delicious but after a couple of ribs it was getting to be too much.

I liked the baked and glazed ribs concept a lot. In future I would play around with the glaze, and try to keep the flavours in equilibrium. Low sodium soy might be an improvement, and cutting the sugar wouldn’t be a bad idea. The baking “barbecue” worked out well, it’s a pretty good substitute for those of use who don’t have a pit in the back yard. I’m still unclear how they were Hawaiian, but they were good.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

93. Grilled Butterflied Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Herbs, and Garlic p.502

The recipe

Spring lamb simply prepared is one of the best rewards I can think of for having suffered through a long winter. Spring lamb comes from a younger animal than lamb without an adjective. Generally spring lamb is 3-5 months old, but it can be called lamb right up until a year old. As the animal gets older it’s flavours become more pronounced, so a piece of spring lamb is going to me more delicate and tender than an older lamb. My dining companion is a bit tentative about lamb, but she likes it in small portions. She’s quite sensitive to the goaty flavours it can take on. For her sake I choose spring lamb whenever possible. I appreciate those more intense flavours, especially in a stew. Occasionally I can get my hands on some goat for a nice curry, and if anyone can point me in the direction of some mutton I’ll be forever indebted to you. Even spring lamb packs a serious flavour punch though. In this dish a leg of lamb (spring or otherwise) is taken off the bone, rubbed with lemon, thyme, rosemary, parsley and garlic, then allowed to sit for an hour for the spices to penetrate before being grilled to medium rare.

This preparation shows off everything that makes lamb great. It’s flavourful enough to stand up to a bold spice rub, it’s fatty so it does well with high heat, it cooks quickly, and tastes best just this side of medium-rare. A leg of lamb like this is what grills were invented for. It developed a pungent, crispy exterior, with a melting, delicate interior. The spice rub charred, and smoked the dish, but enough of it got worked into little crevasses that it retained some of its fresh taste. My only regret is that I have a gas grill. If ever there was a time to break out the hardwood charcoal this is it. Some real wood smoke would have done wonders for an already wonderful dish.

I’d like to take a moment to thank my instant read digital probe thermometer. This was the first dish I used it with, and I can’t tell you how happy it made me. Being able to close the grill with the probe in the meat (it’s attached by a long wire to the display), and set an alarm for the desired internal temperature was a revelation. Our grill is on the flimsy side, so every time we open it it loses a huge amount of heat, and it doesn’t have the mass to bounce back quickly. Being able to keep the lid closed means that the top side of the meat is still being roasted and browning without direct exposure to the heat. Since I started using the digital thermometer everything has been coming out better, and I don’t worry about over or under doing anything. It also means I only need to stab one hole, and the probe is much smaller than my old analogue one. If you don’t have one of these things you really owe it to yourself.

This dish was just fantastic. Lamb prepared like this is an absolute classic, and dozens of cultures have their variations on it. This one leans towards the Greek end of the spectrum, and it works exceptionally well. Many many other flavourful spice rubs could work with this preparation though. The beauty is in taking the lamb leg off the bone and butterflying it so that it grills quickly. Increasing the surface area also gets more flavour into the meat, and gives you more deliciously grilled crusty outside bits. I love that this preparation is easy enough for a casual supper, but would work well as the centerpiece for an Easter feast too. Grilled Butterflied Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Herbs, and Garlic has earned its five mushroom rating.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

77. Twenty-First-Century Beef Wellington p.418

The recipe

There’s not much left to say about this dish. I’ve described it pretty thoroughly in the posts for Cilantro Walnut Filling and the Sour Cream Pastry Dough . Those two recipes are the main ingredients for the final Beef Wellington recipe. A nice big beef tenderloin seasoned with salt and pepper is thoroughly browned, covered in the cilantro walnut filling, and then wrapped up in the sour cream pastry dough. The dough is decorated with cut out bits of pastry, given an egg wash, then the whole thing is baked.

As I said in their respective posts, the dough was a real winner, while the filling was just OK on it’s own, and very out of place in a beef wellington. I mildly overcooked the tenderloin but it was still excellent. Filet mignion and a perfectly baked crust were more than enough to make up for the filling. The final dish was tasty, but I really missed the mushroom of the traditional Wellington. I could live without the big slice of pâté though.

Beef tenderloin can be a real hit to the wallet, at higher end butcher shops a whole tenderloin sells for close to $100, which is really not in line with my financial reality. I managed to find a commercial cut tenderloin (PSMO) for one third the price. It was good quality meat (not organic, local, or in any way fancy, but perfectly nice), but it required a little bit of work on my part. A commercial cut tenderloin comes with a good deal of silver skin to be removed, as well as an extra little side muscle best used for something else. I can’t say that peeling off silver skin is much fun, but it’s absolutely worth doing for the price difference.

This updated beef Wellington didn’t really improve on the original, and other than having beef in a pastry had very little in common with beef Wellington. The pastry and beef were top notch, while the filling was somewhat lacking. I would use this recipe again, but I’d go back to a more traditional filling. I don’t regret making it, but I’m not itching to have the twenty-first century version again.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

76. Cilantro Walnut Filling p.420

The Recipe

This is the filling for Twenty-First Century Beef Wellington. The filling for Beef Wellington in the 19th and 20th centuries was a duxelles and paté de foie. It’s a very French preparation which was renamed and popularized by the British. This twenty-first century version has a lot more in common with Argentina than the old world. I tasted it and my first thought was chimichurri. It’s a preparation of blanched spinach, cilantro, parsley, chopped walnuts, garlic, honey, bread crumbs, egg whites, cumin, corriander, salt, and pepper. The whole thing goes into the food processor and pulsed until smooth.

As a filling for a dish called Beef Wellington it was fairly weird. As a sauce for roast beef tenderloin is wasn’t bad. I can’t get over the preconception of what goes into Beef Wellington. I understand and appreciate the need to play around with traditional dishes, to update them, to take a fresh look at what makes them good, and to help the dishes to evolve with our tastes. Maybe in the twenty-second century I’ll be ready for this filling, but to my palate Beef Wellington without mushrooms in some capacity just can’t be Beef Wellington.

I think I would have preferred to leave the walnuts and cumin out of this filling. Without them it would have been a nice pesto, and might have worked better in the dish. Replacing the walnuts with pine nuts (another pesto classic) would work well too. The walnuts were toasted, and chopped fine in the food processor. This gave them kind of a mealy texture that didn’t really break down into a paste, and didn’t retain much crunch. I also wasn’t crazy about the flavour of the walnuts with the cilantro. The cumin was a distracting touch, that I didn’t think was particularly necessary.

I think a variation on this filling served over a grilled steak would work quite well. It doesn’t stand a chance as a replacement for duxelles in my heart. I give them credit for trying to cut the calorie count of the Beef Wellington, but this isn’t an adequate substitute. I’ll give it a three mushroom rating as a pesto, but as a filling for Beef Wellington it wouldn’t merit more than a two.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

75. Sour Cream Pastry Dough p.419

The recipe

This is the crust for Twenty-First Century Beef Wellington. It’s folded over a browned beef tenderloin, covered in Cilantro Walnut Filling, and baked. It’s a very simple dough, made with flour, butter, sour cream and a dash of salt. It’s brought together, then smeared to distribute the fat, and chilled for a couple of hours before rolling.

The dough was exceptionally strong before baking, it put up with a lot of folding, and pinching, and crimping, without tearing or stretching out too much. It rolled out easily, and stood up to the fillings during baking. Between the filling and the meat juices this dough was asked to encase a lot of liquid, and it did an admirable job. Not a drop leaked out, and the bottom of the crust remained crisp.

The final texture was flaky on the outside, and rich and moist on the inside. The sour cream gave it a bit of a bite, which I really appreciated. I was thoroughly impressed with how beautifully it browned up. The central problem of beef wellington is arranging things so that the pastry is nicely browned at the same time as the meat is medium rare. I took the wellington out when the beef was done, and just hoped for the best on the crust. As it happens I turned my back for a bit too long and ended up closer to medium than medium rare on the beef, but the crust was absolutely perfect.

The crust was probably my favorite part of the final wellington recipe. It tied the flavours of the meat and filling together, and had a wonderful crisp – tender texture. You could replace the tenderloin and filling with all sorts of things in this recipe. The dough would be great filled with vegetables, or fish. It would also be a delightful dough for a savory pie. Maybe I’ll use it for a tourtiere at Christmas.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

62. Char Siu p.478

The recipe

This recipe was a bit of effort, but boy was it worth it. The ingredients are simple and readily available, and they come together in the most delightful way with the judicious application of heat. The recipe calls for a 1 pound boneless pork butt or shoulder. I bought a whole picnic ham (from the shoulder, but with bones and skin left on), and had to figure out how to butcher it myself. I tried leaving the skin on to see if it would end up edible, it didn’t, but no big loss. Score one for the scientific method.

In this recipe strips of pork are marinated in hoisin, soy, sake, honey, ginger, and garlic. The pork is then roasted on a rack in the oven over a pan of water. The marinade is cooked down, and used to baste the pork strips regularly throughout the cooking. It’s really like painting on layers of flavour. The water keeps things moist, and the marinade caramelizes into sticky gold. As the layers of marinade build up the caramel colour deepens it starts to get really difficult to wait for it to be done.

Because so much effort is put into getting as much of the marinade as possible to stick to the pork it ends up being quite intensely flavored. Sweet, salty, and perfumed with garlic and ginger. It’s meant to be one of many small dishes in a Chinese meal, and it’s powerful enough that you can’t eat too much of it. I absolutely loved it, but after about four slices I was finished. The recipe mentions that once made and frozen this pork becomes a valuable commodity, excellent for adding just a bit to a stir fry, or rice. I absolutely have to agree. I ended up with a good bit of leftovers, and I used it to full advantage. It was excellent in a cold sandwich, stirred into scrambled eggs, and as an ingredient in a stir fry from The Book.

Better than the dish itself was the thinking behind it. It’s loaded with the innovation and creativity of limited resources. It takes an inexpensive and unloved part of the pig, and brings out it’s best with some tenderizing and flavorful marinade. Then it goes to great lengths to use that marinade to best advantage. Better yet, the final dish makes a little meat go a long way. In a more reasonable food economy where meat is a valuable and limited resource a little bit of this pork could bring a lot of flavour to other dishes. You can probably get as much meat enjoyment from a little bit of this, as you would from eating a big steak.

Moving this dish in and out of the oven to baste it every few minutes was sticky and somewhat irritating work. I had to jurry rig a rack over pan system, and I came close to sending the pork for a swim in the water bath more than once. I didn’t enjoy cleaning up the little dribbles of marinade that seemed to get cooked onto every available surface, but I absolutely enjoyed the dish. Since is freezes so well I’d suggest doubling the recipe and keeping more of this stuff on hand than you think you’ll need.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

53. Old Fashioned Meat Loaf p.448

The recipe

Take cover! NORAD has detected an extraterrestrial turd loaf coming in fast over the arctic. It wants our Humpback whales to save the future.

This was not the most visually appealing dish I’ve ever made, but it did taste good. I think it’s um, distinctive, shape helped with the flavour too. I’ve made meatloaf in a loaf pan before, and while it’s geometry is soothing, there isn’t all that much surface area exposed to direct heat. This loaf developed an excellent crunchy crust which really made the dish. The secret to the crispy crust was a healthy slathering of ketchup before it went into the oven.

I’m quite proud of The Book for using ketchup here. They didn’t seem to feel bad about it, or tell me that I really should be making my own, or ordering heirloom tomato preserves off the internet. They recommended plain-old funding-John-Kerry’s-political-career ketchup. Maybe this was The Book’s attempt to show that they’re in touch with the common man? who knowns? But I appreciate it.

This is a classic meat loaf recipe that doesn’t deviate or experiment too much. There are a couple of nice touches, but generally it’s straight up memories of childhood comfort food. It starts with a sweat of onions, garlic, celery, carrot, and scallions (one of the slight deviations from the textbook). Then ground beef, pork, breadcrumbs, eggs, and parsley are lightly mixed together and shaped into the giant worm of Arrakis. It’s then covered in ketchup, and baked through.

The book recommends having the butcher coarsely grind beef chuck, and pork tenderloins for this recipe, instead of using the finely textured twice-ground meat that’s available pre-packaged. It wasn’t a command from on high, so I just bought the stuff in the display case. I now see that The Book was right and I was wrong. The flavours in the meatloaf were excellent, its main problem was the texture. It was too tightly packed and dense. Using more coarsely ground meat would almost certainly have taken care of the textural issues, and made this an even better loaf.

My dining companion and I occasionally like to have cook-offs. Kind of like Iron Chef in the privacy of our own home. This dish was my entry for battle meatloaf, and I’m happy to say that it swept the judges votes. Her entry won top marks for presentation and style, but it just couldn’t compete on seasoning and depth of flavour. I’ll have to write the Heinz company to thank them.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

48. Island Pork Tenderloin p.475


This recipe from Epicurious includes the tenderloin recipe from The Book, and a bonus salad.

This was an incredibly easy and delicious way to prepare a pork tenderloin. It took almost no forethought because it’s based entirely on pantry staples. Chances are I wouldn’t even have to go out to get the tenderloins. I’m liable to have a couple in my freezer at any given time because they vary so wildly in price. Sometimes you can pay $13 per loin, and then have them go on sale for $3.50 the next week. Steaks are like that too, but it always puzzles me.

The pork is browned with a dry rub of salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, and cinnamon, and then covered with a brown sugar, garlic, Tabasco mixture and roasted. The browning opens up the flavours of the dry rub, and then the brown sugar coating melts into a spicy garlic glaze. The glaze helped keep the pork juicy and tender, and added deep molasses and caramel flavours. I was worried that it would end up too sweet (1 cup of brown sugar for 2 tenderloins), but it didn’t end up tasting candied at all.

This disappeared within minutes of putting it out, and got rave reviews. I loved that the recipe provided big flavours and an attractive presentation for hardly any time effort or energy. Island Pork Tenderloin, you’ve earned your 5 mushrooms.